Will the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Hold? The India-Pakistan Stress Test
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization lacks many of the essential elements required to function as a genuine security and strategic structure. It now appears to be facing a difficult and cyclically renewed stress test following the recent clash between India and Pakistan, one that the organization averted in 2019 when a similar clash occurred in February, and the organization failed to restore relations between them.
If the organization’s goals and purposes do not include resolving a major security and strategic crisis that could escalate into a nuclear war between two of its member states, then what is the basis on which this organization was founded? Why does it seek to expand? And how can it present itself as a security structure equivalent to other alliances?